The gas products industry ships gases and gas mixtures in carefully constructed metal pressure cylinders, in order to withstand pressure filling/unfilling, as well as transportation and handling of the pressure cylinders between the gas supplier and the gas user. Gases and gas mixtures are injected under pressure from a gas filling manifold into gas cylinders through valve regulators/fittings which are sealed and mounted to the gas cylinders at an upper end thereof. Manually operated levers or knobs are provided, to close the valve regulators/fittings when the gas cylinders are filled, and for subsequent opening of the valve regulators/fittings, when it is desired to use the gas or gas mixture contents within the cylinder.
When mixing two or more gases, the gas product industry has typically rolled or rotated the gas cylinder following filling, in order to mix the gases. This requires placing the filled gas cylinder in a horizontal position on a series of motor driven rollers which rotate the cylinder for a given period of time, usually about 15 minutes, in order to blend or mix the gas mixture. In many cases, the motor driven motor apparatus has been designed to accommodate a plurality of gas cylinders, i.e., 6 cylinders, in order to simultaneously mix the pressurized gas mixture contents of a number of gas cylinders at the same time.
The intimacy or degree of mixing achieved is directly related to the homogeneity of the mixture. Absolute homogeneity would correspond to theoretically perfect mixing; in actual practice; however, only a certain degree of homogeneity is achieved which is sufficient to fulfill the requirements of the gas products industry. It has been determined, on an empirical basis, that the aforementioned cylinder rolling procedure achieves the desired intermixing of gases, if performed over a given period of time, generally accepted to be a 15 minute time period for the intermixture of most gas products in the gas products industry.
While the above procedure has worked quite well up to the present time, it will be apparent from the following description of the apparatus and method of the present invention that the above described procedure is a time consuming, labor exhausting, and an energy and cost inefficient method, as compared to the apparatus and method of the present invention herein disclosed.